Google Drive desktop app gets faster sync with differential uploads

Abner Li | Jan 10 2025 - 1:22 pm PT

Google Drive for desktop on Mac and Windows has been updated with faster file sync thanks to differential uploads.

With this update, “Drive for desktop will now upload only the parts of the file that changed.” This applies to editing “large” files, though Google doesn’t provide specifics.

This has been a highly-requested feature and will result in “much faster Drive syncs.” This should be widely rolled out to all Google Drive users.

Last month, Google made a similar quality-of-life improvement to the Drive website: “you can now watch videos the moment you upload them to Drive on web.”

This highly-requested feature eliminates wait times between upload and playback, while ensuring your videos still get fully processed.

Finally, Google Drive this week brought Gemini to the overlay file previewer for PDFs. It lets you “seamlessly switch between multiple files,” while accessing the side panel to summarize and transform content. Tap the Gemini icon in the top-right corner to get started.

This is different from fully opening a PDF, which gained Gemini in July: “With this update, the default behavior will open a file in the overlay file previewer. If you prefer for PDFs to open in a new tab by default, you can update your PDF opening default behavior in your Drive settings.”

Gemini in Google Drive is available for the following tiers: